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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2013 ..
MR MOORE (continuing):
What we do have is the opportunity to provide regulation for people to be able to gamble in a safer environment. And that is what it is about. There is no safe environment; there is no situation in which we can clearly expect that we can control Internet gambling, certainly to the extent of preventing it. What we ought to seek to do then is to regulate it and control it as far as possible. I draw members' attention to the penultimate paragraph of the commission's conclusions:
The commission is conscious that the regulation of interactive gambling under the Interactive Gambling Act 1998 requires us to deal with difficult issues arising from the use of interactive technology and licence holders who may be based outside Australia. On the other hand, the technology provides much greater opportunity for player protection, regulation and efficient monitoring of the conduct of interactive gambling.
So it seems to me that we have the opportunity to take a sensible approach, and we should move to that sensible approach as quickly as possible. After all, the legislation and these concepts were considered in 1998 when the legislation went through and members sought to ensure that we would be able to have the most effective approach possible.
This is a complex issue. There is no doubt that the social impact of gambling is something that we should be at all times cognisant of and that we should try to minimise the impact. We now have a conclusion from the Gambling and Racing Commission that the best way to proceed is consistent with the act. I think it is incumbent upon us to take that action and to do the best we possibly can with this act.
MS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (3.42): Mr Deputy Speaker, this report makes it very clear that the legislation we have in place at this stage is adequate. And really, I think that is what the Assembly, in the motion that it passed, was concerned about-to make sure that the legislation that we have in place has all of the bells and whistles, the checks and balances, that are required to ensure safe interactive gaming. The gaming commission makes it very clear that they believe that that is the case, but they also believe it is important that this legislation is monitored as time goes on because, as it says, it is impossible for anyone to know what might happen in the future.
One of the things that are very clear here is that, as Mr Moore said, interactive gaming is going to happen. There is no doubt about that. It happens every day and there are many sites overseas. What we wanted to do when the majority of this Assembly passed the legislation in 1998 was ensure that people who use interactive gaming sites could be confident that the sites were safe and appropriate. We wanted to ensure that the legislation stopped young people from gambling and that it did not allow gaming on credit. We have got a number of these checks of the safety issues in our legislation.
If we stop interactive gaming operators registering here in the ACT simply because we have not debated this issue, I think that will be bad for the ACT and it will also be bad for those people who choose to use interactive gaming sites. It is certainly true that the approach that we have taken is much safer and has many more safeguards for the community than is the case with sites that might be operating from off-shore island
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